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UPON WHOM 
RESTS THE GUILT OF THE WAR? 



SEPARATION 

WAR WITHOUT END. 



By M. Edouard ILnboulaye, 

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE. 



WM. 0. BRYANT & 00., PRINTERS, 41 NASSAU STREET, CORNER OF LIBERTY 

186 3. 



£4rs 






NATIONAL UNITY: 

IT MUST NOT BE SURRENDERED. 

[From the A r . T. "Evening Post" Feb. 7, 1863.] 

New York, February 7th, ISoS. 
To Parke Godwin, Esq. : 

I send you herewith a translation from the French of a re- 
markable paper, originally published in the Revue Rationale 
of Paris. It has seemed to me that, in this critical hour of our 
national history, no better service could be rendered the country 
than to give it, in our own language, the widest circulation 
amongst the people. To this end may I not ask you to give it 
a place in the columns of the Eoening Post f 

The author is M. Edouard Laboulaye, member of the Insti- 
tute and Professor of Legislation Comparee in the College of 
France — a man holding the highest position in the first institu- 
tion of the world, the University of France — and whose whole 
life has been devoted to the study of the subject of which he 
writes. 

It may not "be generally known that the lectures of the pro- 
fessors in all the colleges and schools of the University of 
France are open and free to all who may chose to attend them, 
so that the seances of such men as Laboulaye, Michelet, Quinet, 
and other eminent scholars and scientists are crowded by the 
most thoughtful of the men and women of all the nations of the 
worll, who make Paris their resort for the winter. 



I have before rae a letter from a French liberalist, of high 
character and attainments, now a resident of the United States, 
who has himself had the advantage of a personal intercourse 
with M. Laboulaye. in which lie says : " For the last two years 
scarcely has he, in his ckaire de legislation compares, given one 
of his eloquent lectures without introducing the United States 
—their greatness, their constitution, their trials, and their des- 
tinies. It is by thus particularizing his teachings that he has 
aToused for America a universal interest, fur no week passes 
that the learned professor has not around his desk representa- 
tives from all the nations of Europe. Even ladies of all ranks 
and countries— English, Russians, Germans and Spaniards- 
seated there, side by side with the students of the Quartier 
Latin, listen to and applaud his eloquent and earnest advocacy 
of American nationality and free institutions." 

M. Laboulaye himself relates the incident by which his 
thoughts and sympathies were first turned towards the people 
and the institutions of the United States. Everybody who lias 
been in Paris will remember the long rows of wooden trays, 
filled with the strangest jumble of old books, that stretch along 
the river edge of the Quai Voltaire, and the other contiguous 
quais on that side of the Seine. One may find there books in 
all the languages of the world, and sometimes stray copies oi 
very rare works. Well, one day, now several years ago, &£. 
Laboulaye amused himself with rummaging amongst \\w 
old books exposed for sale on the Quai Voltaire. His eye 
caught the title of a book in English ; he took it up, opened it, 
real a few moments, demanded its price, paid it, some few sous, 
and with his eyes still fixed upon its open pages, resumed his 
walk towards the Champs Elysee. Arrived there, la- seated 
himself upon one of the numerous chairs always ready to be 
hired, and continued to read on until the last page of hi-; now 
acquisition was finished; and then, instead of returning home, 



he went in a state of great excitement to M. Armand Bertin, at 
that time editor-in-chief of the Journal des Debats, and on 
meeting him exclaimed : "Congratulate me, I have to-day put 
my hand on a great man." And such was the enthusiasm with 
which he spoke of his new discovery, that M. Bertin begged 
him to make his "great man " at once known to France. M. 
Laboulaye, without delay, set to work, and in a few days there 
appeared, in successive numbers of the Journal des Debuts, 
three masterly articles. The first was " on the works of Dr. 
Ellkky Ciianning," for it was a stray volume of his sermons 
that M. Laboulaye had purchased on the Quai Voltaire, and he 
was the "great man " upon whom he " put his hand " that day. 
The second article was entitled, "The Progress of Religious 
Ideas in New. England," and the last, "The Present Condition 
and Probable Future of the Great Republic." 

The stray seed of the New England Puritan Reformer took 
deep root, and from that day to this M. Laboulaye has been an 
earnest student of American ideas and institutions, and on all 
occasions, and before all men, the unswerving friend and cour- 
ageous advocate of the people and government of the Union. 

A previous article of M. Laboulaye, originally published in 
tiie Journal des Debuts, entitled " A View of the Causes and 
Aims of the Rebellion," had a wide circulation in this country 
through the columns of the Evening Post and other public 
journals, and exerted no little influence upon the formation of 
a just public opinion, here as well as abroad, as to the true 
character of the slave-masters' conspiracy to overthrow demo- 
cratic institutions on this continent. 

These latest pregnant words of the distinguished publicist 
reach us at the very moment of their greatest need. At a 
moment when the public patience seems well nigh exhausted ; 
when here at the north, even the most loyal seem to lose heart 
and to doubt, and the disloyal, under the guise of conservatism 



6 

and in the name of democracy, taking courage, strive so mnch 
the more, to bewilder and divide public opinion and confound 
the judgments of the people upon questions vital to natioual 
salvation. At this critical moment there comes from the other 
side of the Atlantic, from the home of Lafayette and Eocham- 
beau, an answer so direct, so pointed and so conclusive, to the 
most nefarious of the sophistries of the northern parasites of 
the slave-power, that it cannot fail to aid in confounding their 
shameless attempt to shift the guilt of the war from the 
shoulders of their southern masters and to lay it upon those of 
the people of New England. This most enlightened and im- 
partial student of American affairs, looking at the whole great 
conflict, from its inception to the present hour, with a single 
eye to discover the truth, declares that " the South alone is 

guilty." 

But this is by no means the chief point of M. Laboulaye's 
argument. To yield the dissolution of the national unity— 
" the rending asunder of the country," that, in his view, is 
" the one irreparable degradation." " An abdication," he says, 
" so shameful, for a people accustomed to liberty, is not even 
to be thought of, so long as there remains a single man or a 
single dollar to risk in the struggle to keep the inheritance of 
the fathers." 

And this is the momentous point which, I think, yon, and all 
men like you, who have the ability to speak and a great audi- 
ence who wait daily upon your words, should press homo upon 
the minds and hearts of the people and their rulers. 

For any people to permit themselves to meditate the possi- 
bility of a surrender of their nationality, indicates a condition 
of demoralization, which foretells the approach of utter national 
decay, the coming on of the final shame. But for a people so 
planted, 80 nutured by the Divine Providences, so illustrated 
by the heroic characters and deeds of their great founders, as 



the people of the United States — for such a people, in the very 
bloom of their prime, to yield up their national unity at the 
arrogant demand of a few thousand slave-masters, would be 
such an ineffaceable stain upon free institutions, upon demo- 
cratic citizenship, upon Christian civilization, upon human 
nature itself, as is not to be paralleled in the history of the 
world. The ignominious delinquency and partition of Poland 
would be a national glory compared with it. And yet to-day, 
even here in the North, not to speak of the abettors of the 
great treason — the genuine spawn of the Tories 'of 1776 — there 
are men calling themselves loyal, who begin to quail and to 
hint at a possible time for surrender — at a possible time to de- 
file the graves and desecrate the memories of Washington, of 
Adams, of Jefferson, of Hamilton and their great compeers. 

I know that the Supreme Ruler of the Ages, has always 
" the stones" out of which he can " raise up children unto 
Abraham"' — new and faithful nations. Are we to have no other 
significance in the history of the race, but to illustrate these 
portentous words of the Divine Master of these Christian cen- 
turies ? 

How many years of almost hopeless toil and bloody sweat 
did the fathers devote to the acquisition of the great inheritance, 
to maintain which we have given but less than two, of bewil- 
dered and oftentimes aimless preparation ? From the meeting of 
that first Congress of the American people, in this city of New 
York, in 17G5, in which " the brave and noble-hearted" Gads- 
den, of South Carolina, gave utterance to the first grand formula 
of American nationality — " Away with your royal charters, 
and let us stand on the broad, common ground of those natural 
rights that we all feel and know as 'men ; no more New Eng- 
enders, no more New Yorkers on this continent ; but all of us 
Americans" — from that hour onward until 1789, when the 
people of the United States, in their own common name, estab- 



8 

lishod and set in motion a national constitution, the great strug- 
gle went on. The men of the first revolution, almost without 
means, surrounded by all manner of perils, and backed by 
comparatively but a handful of loyal people, waged a strug- 
gle of twenty-four years for the right of independent national 
existence ; a right which, in their judgment, involved all other 
human rights and interests — social, civil, and political — peace, 
prosperity, and glory. And in this struggle, let it not be for- 
gotten, was included a bloody war of seven years — \ r alley Forge 
and all. Less than three millions of people, without ship.*, 
without arms or munitions, without mone} r or credit, but only 
with an earnest will and stout hearts, against the first naval 
and military power of the world, fighting for a great idea, for 
that pearl without price, Liberty, to be set in the golden band 
of national unity. 

National Unity : that is the muniment of title to the inher- 
itance transmitted by the fathers, and which the American 
people to-day stand pledged before the world, to keep intact in 
all its integrity, both of exterior estate and of interior idea, at 
the cost of the last dollar of their wealth and the last drop of 
their blood. JSuch, at least, is the judgment of all the enlight- 
ened and true friends of freedom and humanity, confirmed by 
the universal sense of the people, of all the civilized nations of 
the world. 

Wo must not, we cannot falter, without incurring their con- 
tempt, and the curses of our own posterity to the remotest 
generations. 

Your friend, 

JAMES MoKAYE. 



DISUNION: 

DEGRADATION WITHOUT REMEDY. 

FEOM THE " RKVUE NATIOXALE." 

The civil war which for two years past has divided and de- 
vastated the United States has produced its evil consequences in 
Europe also. The. scarcity of cotton occasions great suffering. 
The workmen of Eouen and Mulhouse suffer no less than the 
spinners and weavers of Lancashire. "Whole populations are 
reduced to beggary, and have no resource, or hope of suste- 
nance during the winter, but private charity or aid from the 
government. In such a cruel crisis — in the midst of such un- 
merited sufferings — it is natural that the public opinion of 
Europe should be unsettled, and that they who prolong the fra- 
tricidal war should be charged with culpable ambition. Peace 
in America, peace at any price, is the urgent need ; is the cry 
of thousands of men among us who are pinched with hunger, 
the innocent victims of the passions and resentments that em- 
bruo in blood the United States. 

ihcse complaints are but too well founded. The world to- 
day is a compact of mutual interests and obligations. For 
modern nations, therefore, who live by industry, peace is a 
necessary condition of existence. But unfortunately, if it is easy 
to indicate the remedy, to apply it is almost impossible. Until 
now, it is only by means of war that we could hope to reach the 
end of the war. To throw ourselves with arms in our hands 
between the combatants, for the purpose of imposing a truce 
upon them, would be an enterprise in which Europe would ex- 
haust all her resources, and to what end? As Mr. Cobden has 
justly said, "It would be far cheaper to feed the laboring 
classes, who are now starving in consequence of the American 
crisis, on game and champagne wine." 



• 10 

To offer to-day a peaceful intervention would be to expose 
ourselves to a refusal, if it did not even exasperate one of the 
parties and provoke it to measures of violence. It would lessen, 
too, the chances of our mediation being accepted at a more fa- 
vorable moment. TVe are thus forced to remain spectators of a 
deplorable war, which causes us innumerable evils. We can 
only pray that exhaustion or suffering may at last appease the 
maddened combatants, and oblige them to accept reunion or 
separation. A sad position undoubtedly, but one which neu- 
tral powers have at all times been obliged to accept, and from 
which we cannot escape but at the risk of unknown perils. 

But if we have not the right to interfere, we have at least 
that of complaining, and of seeking to discover who is really 
guilty of this war, which so disturbs our well-being. The opin- 
ion of Europe is something. It may hasten events and bring 
about peace better than bayonets. Unfortunately, for two 
years, public opinion in Europo has been led astray and has 
taken a false direction. In arraying itself on the wrong side, it 
but prolongs the resistance, instead of arresting it. 

The South lias found numerous and skilful advocates in 
France and England. They have presented her cause as that' 
of justice and liberty. They have proclaimed the right of 
separation, and have not quailed even before the necessity of 
apologizing for slavery. To-day these arguments begin to loose 
their force. Thanks to a few writers who do not chaffer with 
the great interests of humanity — thanks, above all, to M. DB 
Gaspauin, light has begun to break forth. "We know now what 
to think of the origin and character of the rebellion. To 
every impartial observer it is now evident that the wrong lies 
wholly with the South. It is not necessary to be a Montesquieu 
to comprehend that a portion of a people, whose rights are in no 
way endangered, but who are led by pride and ambition to at- 
tempt the destruction of national unity and to rend assunder 
the country, have no claim to the sympathy of the French peo- 
ple A b to canonizing slavery, that is a work we must leave 
to southern preachers. Not all the ingenuity of the world will 
ever be able to retrieve that lost cause. Even if the confeder- 
ates had a thousand reasons for complaining and revolting, 
there must always remain an ineffaceable Btain on their rob"'- 



11 



lion. No Christian, no liberal thinker, can ever interest him- 
self in men who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
openly and audaciously proclaim their wish to perpetuate and 
extend slavery. The planters themselves, may indeed listen to 
theories which have intoxicated and ruined them ; but no such 
sophistries can ever cross the ocean. 

The advocates of the South have rendered her a fatal service. 
They have made her believe that Europe, enlightened or mis- 
led, would take sides with her and would finally throw into 
the scales something more than sterile wishes. This delusion 
has encouraged and still encourges the resistance*of the South. 
It prolongs the war and our sufferings. If, from the first, as 
the North had a right to expect, the friends of liberty had 
boldly declared themselves against the policy of slavery — if the 
partisans of maritime peace — if the defenders of the rights of 
neutrals, had spoken in favor of the Union — had discouraged a 
separation which could only benefit England, it is probable 
that the South would have entered with less temerity upon a 
road without an outlet. If, in spite of the courage and devotion 
of her soldiers, if, after all the skill of her generals, the South 
fails in an enterprise, which, in my opinion, cannot be too often 
denounced, let her lay the fault at the door of those who had 
so poor an esteem for Europe, as to imagine that they could 
suborn its public opinion to serve a political scheme, against 
which patriotism protests, and which the gospel and humanity 
alike condemn. 

"Granted," say they, "that the South is wholly in the 
wrong* but, after all, she is determined to separate. She can 
no longer live with the North. The war itself, whatever may 
be its origin, is a new cause of disunion. By what right can 
twenty millions of men oblige ten millions* of their compatriots 
to continue a detested alliance, to respect a contract which 
they are resolved to break at any cost ? Is it possible to 
imagine that two or three years of strife and misery will make 
the conquered and the conquerors live peaceably together ? 
Can a country, two or three times as large as France, be subju- 

* And of these tea millions there are four millions of slaves, whose wishes are not 
consulted. 



12 

gated ? Would there not be always ill blood between the 
parties? Separation is perhaps a misfortune, but to-day the 
misfortune is irreparable. Let it be admitted that the North 
has the law, the letter and the spirit of the constitution on her 
side, there remains always an undebateable point: the South 
wills to be master at the South. You have not the right to 
crash a people that lights so bravely. Resign yourselves." 

If we were less enervated by the luxuries of modern life and 
by the idleness of a long peace, if our hearts still retained some 
remnant of that patriotism which, in 1792, sent our forefathers 
to the shore#of the Rhine, the answer would be an easy one. 
To-day I fear we can no longer comprehend it. If to-morrow 
the south of France should revolt and demand separation, if 
Alsace and Lorraine wished to isolate themselves, what would 
be, I do not say our right, but our duty 1 Would we stop to 
count votes, to know if a third or a half of the French people 
had a right to destroy the national unity, to annihilate France, 
to rend in fragments the glorious heritage bought with the 
blood of our fathers? jMo, we would take up our muskets and 
march. Woe to him who does not feel that his country is 
sacred, and that it is glorious to defend it, even at the cost of all 
possible sufferings and dangers. 

"America is not France; it is a confederation, it is not a 
nation." Who says that? The South, t<> justify her crime. The 
North says the contrary, and for two years, at the price of 
sacrifices without number, affirms that the people of the United 
States are one people, and that their country shall not be cut 
in two. This is noble. This is grand, and what astonishes ine 
is, that France can remain unmoved in view of such patriotism. 
Love of country — is not that the distinguishing virtue of the 
French people 1 

What, then, is the South, and whence dors she derive fids 
right of separation, so loudly proclaimed I Is it a conquered 
people that seeks to recover its independence, like Lombardy ■ 
1^ it a distinct race that wishes no longer to continue an op- 
pressive alliance 2 No, they are communities of planters estab- 
lished by American hands, o:i the territories of the Union, who 
revolt without any other reasou than their own ambition. Let 
us take a map of the United States. W we except Virginia, the 



13 

two Carolinas, and Georgia, which were originally English col- 
onies, all the rest of the South is settled upon lands bought and 
paid for by the Union. That is to say, the North has borne 
the greatest part of the expense. Louisiana was sold to the 
United States in 1S0I, by the first consul, for fifteen millions 
of dollars. Florida was purchased of Spain in 1820, for 
about five millions. The Mexican war, with its cost of a bil- 
lion of money and its cruel losses, was necessary to secure 
Texas. In short, of all the rich territories that border the Mis- 
sissippi and the Missouri from their source to their mouth, there 
is not one inch but has been paid for by the Union, and therefore 
belongs to it. It is the Union that has driven out or indemni- 
fied the Indians. It is the Union that has built all the forts, 
the docks, the lighthouses, and harbors. It is the Union that 
made all these desert places of value, and rendered colonization 
possible. Northern as well as Southern men cleared and 
planted these lands, and transformed into flourishing States 
these sterile solitudes. Can old Europe, where unity is every- 
\v here the result of conquest, show us a title to property so 
sacred as this? A country more entirely the common work of 
a whole people ? And now, shall a minority be permitted to 
appropriate a territory which belongs to all, and to choose for 
themselves the best part of it ? Can a minority be permitted 
to destroy the Union and to imperil its first benefactors, with- 
out whom, indeed, it could not exist? To say that this revolt 
is not impious, is to say that caprice constitutes right. 

It is not, however, a political reason only, which opposes the 
separation. Its geography, the situation of the different por- 
tions, obliges the United States to form one nation. Strabo, 
contemplating the vast country we now call France, said, with 
the foresight of genius, that beholding the nature of the territory 
and the courses of the streams, it was evident that the forests of 
Gaul, then thinly inhabited, would become the home of a great 
people. Nature had prepared our territory to become tho 
theatre of a great civilization. This is no less true of Amer- 
ica. She is, in truth, only a double valley with an impercep- 
tible head-level and two great water courses, the Mississippi 
and the St. Lawrence. No high mountains which separate and 
isolate peoples; no natural barriers like the Alps and Pyrenees. 



14 



The West cannot live without the Mississippi — to possess the 
mouth of the river is for the farmers of the West a question of 
life and death. 

The United States have felt this from the first. When the 
Ohio and Mississippi were still only streams lost in the great 
forests of the Southwest — when the first planters were but a 
handful of men scattered over the wilderness, the Americans 
knew already that New Orleans was the key of the whole coun- 
try. They would not leave it in possession of Spain or France. 
Napoleon understood this. He held in his hands the future 
greatness of the United States. It did not displease hira to 
cede to America this vast territory, with the intention, he said, 
of giving to England a maritime rival which sooner or later 
would humble the pride of our enemy. He might have dis- 
possessed himself merely of the left bank of the river, and thus 
have satisfied the United States, who at that time asked no 
more ; but he did more (and here 1 think he was very wrong), 
he renounced, with a stroke of the pen, a country as vast as 
half of Europe, and gave up our last right to the beautiful river, 
we had ourselves discovered. Very soon sixty years will have 
elapsed since this cession. The states now called Louisiana, 
Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon, the ter- 
ritories of Nebraska, Dacotah, Jefferson, and Washington, which 
will soon become states, have been established on the immenso 
domain abandoned by Napoleon. Without counting the slave- 
holding population, which seeks to destroy the Union, there are 
ton millions of freemen between Pittsburg and Fort Union, who 
claim the course and mouth of the Mississippi as having been 
ceded to them by Franco. It is from us that they hold their 
title and their possession. They have the right of sixty years' 
occupancy — a right consecrated by labor and cultivation — a 
right derived from a solemn contract, and better still, from 
nature and from God. And for defending this right, we re- 
proach them. They are usurpers and tyrants, because tiny will 
7)' it put themselves at the mercy of an ambitious minority. 
Wh:i1 should we say if tomorrow, Normandy, in rebellion, 
should claim as her own Rouen and Havre? And yet, what is 
the course of the Seine compared to that of the Mississippi, 
which extends two thousand two hundred and fifty miles, and 



15 

receives as tributaries all the waters of the West? To possess 
New Orleans is to command a valley which comprises two- 
thirds of the United States. " We will neutralize the river," 
they say: We all know what snch promises are worth. We 
have seen what Russia did with the mouth of the Danube. The 
Crimean war was necessary that Germany might regain the free 
• use of her great river. If to-morrow a new war should break 
. out between Austria and Russia, we may be sure that the pos- 
session of the Danube would be the stake of the contest. 

It cannot be otherwise in America from the day when the 
Mississippi, for hundreds of leagues, shall flow between two slave- 
holding shores. Already the effect of the war has been to stop 
the exportation of wheat and corn, the riches of the West. 

In 1861 it became necessary to burn the useless crops, to the 
great injury of Europe, who is the gainer by these exports. 
The South understands so thoroughly the strength of her posi- 
tion, that her ambition is to separate the valley of the Missis- 
sippi from the Eastern States, to unite herself with the AVest, 
and to condemn thus the Yankees of New England to a ruin- 
ous isolation. The Confederates use the Mississippi as a bait 
by which they hope to reconstruct, profitably to themselves — 
that is to say, in the interests of slavery — the Union which 
they have broken up through fear of liberty. 

We see, then, what to think of the pretended tyranny of the 
North ; what truth there is in the assertion that she wishes to 
oppress aud subjugate the South. On the contrary, the North 
only defends herself. In maintaining the Union, it is her rigut, 
it is her existence that she would save. 

Thus far I have spoken in the name of the material interests 
only — legitimate interests, and which, founded on solemn titles, 
constitutes a sacred right ; but if we examine the moral and 
political interests — interests of a superior order — we shall see 
still more clearly that the North cannot yield without self- 
destruction. 

The United States are a Republic, the freest and at the 
same time the mildest and happiest government that tho 
world has ever seen. In what consists this prosperity of the 
Americans? They are alone upon an immense territory; they 
have never been obliged to concentrate power and weaken 
l'berty, for the purpose of resisting the ambition and jealousy of 



1G 



their neighbors. In the United States there was no standing 
army, no great war navy. The immense sums spent by us to 
avoid or maintain war were used by the Americans to establish 
schools — in giving to every citizen, rich or poor, that education, 
that instruction which constitutes the moral grandeur and the 
true riches of a people. Their foreign policy was contained in 
a single maxim. Never to intermeddle in the political quarrels 
of Europe on the sole condition that Europe would never inter- 
fere in their affairs, and would respect the liberty of the seas. 

Thanks to those wise principle?, bequeathed to them by 
Washington, in his immortal Farewell Address, the United 
States have enjoyed for eighty years a peace undisturbed but 
once, in 1S12, when they were obliged to withstand England 
and maintain the rights of neutrals. For the last seventy 
years, we have spent billions to maintain our liberty or our 
preponderance in Europe. The United States have employed 
these billions in ameliorations of all kinds. That is the secret 
of their prodigious success ; their isolation has made their 
prosperity. 

Suppose, now, that this separation should be accomplished, and 
that the new confederacy should comprise all the slave-states ; 
the North loses at once her power and her institutions. The 
Republic is stabbed to the heart. There would be in America 
two rival nations, always on the eve of conflict. Peace would 
by no means extinguish enmities. It would not obliterate the 
memories of past greatness, nor of the Union destroyed. 

The South victorious would be doubtless no less a friend of 
slavery, no less in love with dominion, than in former times. 
The enemies of slavery, now masters of their own policy, would 
not surely be made more moderate by separation. What would 
the Southern Confederacy be to the North? A foreign power 
blished in America, with a frontier of fifteen hundred miles 
— a frontier open on all sides, and consequently, always threat- 
ening or threatened. This power, hostile by reason of its vicin- 
ity, and still more so on account of its institutions, would pos- 
sess some of the most important portions of the New World. 
She would own half of the sea-coasts of the Union — she would 
command the Gulf of Mexico, an inland sea one third the size 
of the Mediterranean. She would be mistress of the mouth of 



the Mississippi, and could at her will ruin the people of the 
West. The remnant of the old Union must, then, always 
maintain an attitude of defense towards their rivals. Custom- 
house and frontier difficulties, rivalries, jealousies — all the 
scourges of old Europe, would at once overwhelm America. It 
would he necsssary to establish custom-houses over an extent of 
five hundred leagues — to construct and arm forts along this 
immense frontier, support a large standing army and navy. In 
other words — they must renounce the old constitution — weaken 
municipal independence and concentrate power. Adieu then 
to the old and glorious liberty ! Adieu to those institutions 
which made America the common country of all those who 
lacked a breathing place in Europe. The work of Washing- 
ton would be utterly destroyed, and the new condition of things 
■would be full of difficulty and of peril. I understand how such 
a future might rejoice the people who can never pardon Amer- 
ica her prosperity and her grandeur. History is full of these 
deplorable jealouses. But I understand, even still better how 
a people accustomed to liberty should risk their last man and 
their last dollar to keep the inheritance of their fathers, ami t 
respect it. What I do not comprehend is, that there should be 
found in Europe, people, calling themselves liberal, who reproach 
the North for her courageous resistance, and counsel a shameful 
abdication. The war is a terrible evil ; but from the war a 
durable peace may spring. The South may be worn out by an 
exhausting struggle. The old Union may be again restored — 
the future may be saved. But what can be the issue of separ- 
ation, if not war without end and miseries without number ? 
The dismemberment of the Union — the rendering asunder of 
the country, would be a degradation without remedy. A fate 
so shameful is to be accepted, only, when one is utterly crushed 
out and trodden under foot. 

So far I have argued on the hypothesis that the South would 
remain an independent power. But unless the West should 
join the Confederates, re-establishing a Union which should 
exclude New England, this independence is a chimera. It 
might hist a few years, but in ten or twenty years, when the 
West shall have doubled or tripled its \'t\^ population, what will 
the Confederacy be — weakened, per force, by servile cultiva 



18 

tion — compared to a people of thirty millions of men shutting 
her in on two sides ? In self-defence the South would be forced 
to lean on Europe. Her existence would depend on her being 
protected by a maritime power. England alone is in a condi- 
tion to guaranty her sovereignty. This would be a new danger 
for free America and for Europe. There is no navy in the 
South, and with slavery there never will be any. England at 
once would seize the monopoly of cotton, and would furnish 
the South with capital and ships. In two words, the triumph of 
the South is the re-establishment of England on the continent, 
whence she was driven by the policy of Louis Sixteenth and 
Napoleon. It weakens neutrals, it entangles France again, in 
all those vexed questions of libert} r of the seas, which have cost 
us already two centuries of struggle and suffering. The Ameri- 
can Union, while defending its own rights, had assured the 
freedom of the seas. The Union destroyed, English supremacy 
would revive again. It is peace banished from the world ; it is 
a return to a policy which has so far only favored our rivals. 

This is what Napoleon felt to be true — this is what we forget 
to-day. It would seem as if history were merely a collection 
of pleasant stories to amuse children. No one is willing to 
understand the lessons of the past. If the experience of our 
fathers was not lost upon our ignorance, we should see 
that in defending her own independence, and in main- 
taining the national unity, the North defends our cause as 
well as her own. All our prayers would be for the triumph of 
our old and faithful friend?. To weaken the United States will 
be to weaken ourselves. At the first quarrel with England we 
shall regret, but too late, that we abandoned a policy which 
for forty years has been the guaranty of our own safety. 

In writing these pages, I do not expect to convert those who 
have in their hearts an innate sympathy for slavery. I write 
tor those honest souls, who allow themselves to be enticed by 
the great words of national independence, paraded before their 
eyes purposely to deceive and delude them. The South has 
never been threatened. To-day she might como back into 
the Union, even with her slaves. It is only demanded of her 
not to destroy the national unity, and not to subvert liberty. 
We cannot repeat it too often : the North is not the aggressor. 
It only defends, as every true citizen should, the national coin- 



10 

pact, the integrity of the country. It is sad that it has found 
so little support in Europe, and especially in France. They 
relied on us — in us they placed their trust — and we have 
abandoned them as if the sacred words of Country and of 
Liberty no longer awoke a response in our hearts What has 
become of the days when the whole of France applauded the 
young Lafayette, as he buckled on his sword in the cause of 
America? "Who has imitated him, who has recalled that glori- 
ous memory ? Have we grown so old as to have forgotten all 
that? 

What will be the issue of the war? It is impossible to fore- 
see. The South may succeed. The North may be divided and 
exhausted by intestine strife. The Union is, perhaps, even now, 
but a great memory. But whatever may be the future, or 
whatever fortune may attend it, the duty of every man who 
does not allow himself to be carried away by the success of the 
present hour, is to sustain and encourage the North to the last 
— to condemn those whose ambition threatens to destroy the 
most perfect and the most patriotic work of humanity — to re- 
main faithful to the end of the war, and, even after defeat, to 
those, who will have fought to the last moment for Eight and 
Liberty. 

EDOUARD LABOULAYE. 



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